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Meet the Team
PEN Scotland is run and managed entirely by volunteers. Most of us have experience in running formal and informal training and education sessions for trade unions, schools, colleges, universities and a host of public- and third-sector organisations. In the spirit of popular education, however, we are always learning and reflecting on our methods.
We are always keen to collaborate with others and we welcome anyone who wishes to join the PEN Scotland team on a more regular basis.
Dawn Brennan
Dawn has been an activist and worked in social care for almost forty years. She is a qualified trainer and worked freelance for the University of Glasgow on their Activate course. She has also delivered training across Scotland to a range of third-sector organisations.
Dawn is really excited to be involved in PEN, seeing its importance in creating spaces to discuss, and even disagree, about the issues in our communities today. She sees popular education as a method to ensure as many people's opinions and experiences are heard and that this should be practiced by all activists.
Frances Curran
I became interested in popular education after of decades of involvement in struggles like the miners’ strike and then as an organiser of campaigns including the mass anti poll tax campaign, Youth Against Racism in Europe, the campaign against the Criminal Justice Bill, as well as occupations to stop the closure of community facilities. I recognised the enormous amount of education that takes place in struggles.
I went from organiser to legislator when I was elected to the Scottish Parliament, introducing a bill to implement Free School Meals, but with a clarity that much of my work was supporting communities who were trying to change their world.
By this time I had come across the ideas of Paulo Freire and began reading and researching popular education. On leaving parliament I undertook a postgraduate qualification at Glasgow University specialising in Popular Education thoroughly enjoying having the time to read and think how the ideas were of practical use in our movement here in Scotland.
I then became a lecturer in further education and with a few others set up PEN.There is so much more for PEN to do, but it’s good to take a moment to see the distance we have come.
David Green
I became politically active when I was eighteen years old, campaigning against the 2003 US-UK invasion of Iraq. Since then, internationalism and solidarity have been central to my political outlook. I have taken part in many local campaigns, including against cuts to local services and housing stock transfers. Most recently, in 2021 I helped set up a national campaign against energy price rises, and in 2023, played a central role in one of Scotland’s longest-running public sector strikes.
As a lecturer in the further education sector, I have also studied and gained expertise in popular education methods as a means to empower working people. I have come to see my work with PEN Scotland as central to all my activism and as a means to develop a feminist, militant democratic culture among activists.
Don Mackeen
Don has worked in the Further Education sector as a lecturer in Supported Education for twenty years, working specifically with students with Asperger's Syndrome. He has also helped develop and introduce urban gardening and geography into the college's curriculum. Throughout his career, Don has presented at international conferences in Greece, China and Russia to highlight this work, as well as participating in research trips abroad to Cuba. He also filmed a documentary that looked at urban gardening in Detroit and Glasgow and how it can be used as an educational tool.
Don has an interest in how education can allow marginalised people empower themselves and develop their talents. Don also wants to help build an educational culture that allows people to gain an understanding of the world they live in, so they can develop the tools to change it.
Jeff Meadowcroft
I have been teaching in higher education in the UK for fifteen years, specialising in economic and social history, politics, sociology, research methods, and academic skills/ literacies. I have been active on the left in Glasgow for close to twenty years, with experience in organising, campaigning, and undertaking research projects for trade unions and with tenants’ organisations, amongst others.
As a member of the Popular Education Network, I am particularly interested in helping to organise accessible and practically useful educational events that will help people to understand and act upon the political, social and economic forces that shape their own lives.
